Software development for avionics hardware requires substantial knowledge of programming languages and avionics certification requirements. Typically, in avionics environments, the software development cycle is measured in months or years. Developing a working software prototype can take weeks or months.
Further, due to the special nature of avionics safety requirements, the avionics industry has developed a number of avionics-specific standards which are not necessarily focused on ease-of-use for the software developer. Information and tutorials on most of these standards is not readily available.
While much progress has been made in the past decade in terms of model based development and higher-level languages, these tools come with a high license cost, certification burden, and a recurring certification effort to maintain the environments, the runtime environments or libraries, and the software itself.
What is needed is a means for early prototype development along with a mechanism to provide a path to certification in both military and commercial avionics environments.